It should be noted that despite the dollars AFB received from Adobe, AFB
still stands by its position that PDF files do not provide effective
communication to blind person on a reliable and consistent basis and
therefore cannot be considered accessible communications to the blind.

Kelly

----- Original Message -----
From: "Peter Altschul" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, March 30, 2004 11:11 AM
Subject: FYI: AFB report on accessibility of Adobe Acrobat software


> ACCESSIBILITY OF ADOBE(tm) ACROBAT(tm) SOFTWARE FOR PEOPLE WITH
> DISABILITIES
>
> L. Guarino Reid and T.Cotton
> Adobe Systems Incorporated
>
> Kh. Eghtesadi and J. Denham
> AccessWorld Solutions,
> American Foundation for the Blind
>
>
>
>
> Summary
>
> Adobe's suite of Acrobat(tm) software products enables users to create,
> format, and read Portable Document Format (PDF) files from a variety of
> applications. PDF files are an industry standard for sharing
> richly-formatted documents. More than 20 million documents are available
> using this format on the Worldwide Web, with more than two million on
> government web sites. Corporations and institutions, across industries,
> compose and disseminate everything from user manuals to annual reports
> to legal documents using the PDF file format.
>
> To assure accessibility of Acrobat(tm) software for disabled users,
> Adobe Systems Incorporated engaged AccessWorld Solutions (AWS), the
> consulting arm of the American Foundation for the Blind. The purpose was
> to evaluate the accessibility features of Acrobat 6.0(tm) and Adobe
> Reader 6.0 (tm) software products and provide recommendations for making
> PDF files more accessible to people with disabilities. This paper
> summarizes the results of that evaluation and discusses how the results
> contributed to improving the accessibility features of Acrobat 6.01(tm)
> software.
>
>
> Background
>
> For individuals who cannot access standard printed documents, electronic
> publishing offers individuals with disabilities the opportunity for
> information access. Assistive technology provides the means for these
> individuals to access information independently. Because of their
> pervasiveness on the web and in the workplace, accessibility of PDF
> files is critical to people with disabilities. However, since its
> development, the PDF file format has represented a challenge to blind
> and visually impaired people. This inaccessibility stemmed from the
> inability of screen readers to completely and accurately read the PDF
> document. This lack of complete access led to the belief that PDFs are
> not usable by blind or visually impaired persons. During the past few
> years, Adobe has attempted to remove accessibility barriers and present
> a complete and readable PDF file to the screen reader. Improvements were
> made at different levels, including collaborating closely with screen
> reader manufacturers. In addition, Adobe conducted an accessibility
> assessment of Adobe Reader 6.0(tm) and Acrobat 6.0 Professional(tm)
> utilized directly by blind and visually impaired users from AWS.
>
>
> Accessibility of Acrobat 6.0(tm)
>
> An essential requirement for experiencing optimal accessibility with
> Adobe Acrobat(tm) or Adobe Reader(tm) is the presence of a Tagged PDF
> file. Logical structure was introduced in PDF 1.3 as part of Acrobat 4;
> Tagged PDF was introduced in PDF 1.4, as part of Acrobat 5 in
> 2001.Tagged PDF files contain logical structure about the contents of
> the file, similar to an HTML file. Tagging delineates the content's
> reading order, identifies multi-column text, marks headings, indicates
> table structure, permits the addition of alternate descriptions for
> images and form fields, and provides information for reflowing a
> document for low vision users. Tagged PDF is also essential for
> accurately converting PDF to alternate formats (e.g., RTF, HTML, and
> XML).
>
> Most PDF's on the Web are not tagged. This is due to a number of
> reasons: the PDF was created before Tagged PDF was developed, the PDF
> was generated by an application which does not create Tagged PDF, or the
> author did not know how to create Tagged PDF from the authoring
> application. Untagged PDF files are not necessarily inaccessible.
> Acrobat(tm) and the Adobe Reader (tm) attempt to deliver content to the
> assistive technology whether or not the PDF file is tagged. The greater
> the complexity of an untagged PDF file (e.g., multiple columns, presence
> of graphics/tables, etc.), the greater the likelihood a user relying on
> assistive technology will find the untagged PDF file to be inaccessible.
>
>
>
> Evaluation of Acrobat 6.0(tm) Accessibility
>
> Acrobat 6.0(tm) provides accessibility features such as a downloading
> and installation capability, a quick accessibility check, extreme
> magnification ratio, high contrast ratio color settings, and an embedded
> Read Out function. On the Microsoft Windows Operating System, it
> supports Microsoft Active Accessibility to expose document contents to
> assistive technology.
>
> The Accessibility Evaluation conducted by AWS was part of an Adobe
> initiative to validate the accessibility of Acrobat 6.0(tm) by people
> with disabilities. AWS evaluated Adobe Reader 6.0(tm) and Acrobat 6.0
> Professional(tm) to identify major accessibility barriers. AWS
> implemented an Accessibility Testing Procedure(c) to assess the user
> interface and features of the software. This included using native
> application files from Microsoft Office(tm) and real-life workflow
> cases. Freedom Scientific's JAWS 4.51 was used as the screen reader. The
> evaluation team included three blind accessibility experts, a
> visually-impaired user, and a sighted accessibility expert. The process
> was coordinated and observed by a number of Adobe technical and
> marketing staff.
>
> The evaluation confirmed that both products provide useful accessibility
> features. However, due to the widespread existence and complexity of
> untagged PDF, Adobe sought to maximize the power of its software. AWS
> provided technical recommendations for improving Adobe Acrobat 6.0 (tm)
> and Adobe Reader 6.0(tm) related to product compatibility with screen
> readers, enhancement of Help, and the labeling of icons/graphics.
> Recommendations for Acrobat 6.0 Professional(tm) focused on more
> complete "prompting" information, better compatibility with screen
> readers, and keyboard substitutions for mouse-driven features.
>
>
> Accessibility Features of Adobe Acrobat 6.01(tm)
>
> In the weeks following the evaluation, several accessibility
> enhancements were incorporated into the release of Acrobat 6.01(tm).
> Contributing to these improvements were the findings and recommendations
> of AWS and the cooperation of the assistive technology providers at
> Dolphin Oceanic, Ltd; Freedom Scientific Corporation; and GW Micro, Inc.
> This section summarizes the resulting improvements.
>
> Blind Users
> Acrobat 6.01(tm) provides useful features for interfacing with the
> screen reader, for checking and informing the user of accessibility
> status, and for choosing the technique for calculating the reading order
> in untagged files. The major accessibility features of Acrobat 6.01(tm)
> related to the screen reader are listed below.
>
> Quick Accessibility Check -This command checks whether a file:
>
> - Has security settings that prohibits access by screen readers.
>
> - Appears to be a scanned document. (No text is recognized in scanned
> documents.)
>
> - Contains no tagging to indicate the correct reading order.
>
> - Reveals no accessibility barriers.
>
> A file which passes the Quick Check may still have accessibility
> barriers. It may contain images with no alternate descriptions, portions
> of the content may be untagged, or the tagging may not reflect an
> appropriate reading order.
>
> ? Document Mode vs. Page Mode - Document Mode allows the screen reader
> to access all content in the PDF file. This provides the user with all
> screen reader's functions to navigate the document. It ignores
> artificial boundaries introduced by fitting the document onto physical
> pages. Page Mode allows the screen reader to access only a single page
> at a time. This limits the demands on the screen reader resources. A
> single page loads more quickly than the entire document. However, the
> user needs to use the Adobe(tm) Reader's navigation facilities instead
> of the screen reader's for advancing. Reading Preferences lets the user
> control whether documents should be delivered a page at a time, in Page
> Mode. It also lets the user set a threshold for the largest document to
> be presented in Document Mode.
>
> ? Reading Order - This preference controls which of the three algorithms
> will analyze an untagged file. In Acrobat 6.01(tm), the default is "Use
> reading order in raw print stream." This presents the words in the order
> in which they are printed on the page by the authoring application. This
> may or may not be the logical reading order for the page. The most
> accurate results are produced by the recommended option "Infer reading
> order from document", but this may be slow. The reading orders
> "Left-to-right, top-to-bottom" and "Use reading order in raw print
> stream" are faster than "Infer reading order from document", since they
> attempt to process the text on a page. They will not recognize tables
> and will not include form fields.
>
> While the Adobe(tm) Reader is analyzing the structure of a page or
> document, the user's screen reader is waiting silently and with no
> feedback. For large documents, users should use a quicker option and use
> the full inference only when they are not getting satisfactory results
> from the simpler option.
>
> Low-Vision Users
> Acrobat 6.01(tm) provides accessibility features for low-vision users,
> including:
>
> 64 times magnification ratio
>
> High contrast ratio color settings with a variety of options
>
> Read Out Loud feature utilizing native OS TTS engine
>
> For Tagged PDF, a re-flowing function which arranges contents in a
> single column that doesn't need horizontal scrolling at any
> magnification
>
>
>
> Concluding Remarks
>
>
> Complete accessibility of Adobe(tm) software is a long-term goal to be
> achieved by meticulously working with disabled people to address
> accessibility issues. With future releases of Acrobat(tm) products,
> additional accessibility features will be introduced and enhanced.
>
>
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>


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